


There’s a Pattern

by Iron



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe: No War/Pre-War, Election Fraud is STILL a CRIME, Even if it’s for good, Gen, Prowl does crimes, Prowl is literally a genius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23778979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iron/pseuds/Iron
Summary: Prowl sees a pattern in the data he’s compiling. He decides to fix things.—Prowl Week #3 - Law/Crime
Comments: 6
Kudos: 56
Collections: Prowl Week





	There’s a Pattern

**Author's Note:**

> Big Depressi on my end. Quarantine Days are not going great.

Sometimes the law and justice have nothing to do with each other. 

Prowl figured that out when he was far too young. 

He was neither in forensics nor the investigative unit the first time he realized that the law would never be enough. He was young, just coming into himself, and working within the Senate office doing datawork and compiling information for his next campaign. 

It was there, sifting through file after file, number set after number set, feeding data to his auxiliary computer until it purred pleasantly inside his helm, that he saw the pattern emerge. He wasn’t even looking for it; his mind simply laid out every pattern it found relative to the numbers he fed it. And he fed it every dataset on crime, income, fuel dispensary location, sparklinghood injury, welfare funding, and voting habits, and what Prowl found was ... disturbing, at the time. It took him much longer to see the bigger picture. 

At first, all he wanted to do was understand. There were discrepancies in the data. Numbers he couldn’t explain, explanations that didn’t fit. So he packed up his datapads and went to look for the thing his auxiliary computer could do the most with: first-person data. 

He walked the city for weeks, barely sleeping so he could turn his required reports into the office. He wore through three sets of tires just trying to see anyone, and he didn’t even start talking to people until the third week. SO many voices, so many stories, spilling out of people who wouldn’t share with him if they weren’t so tired of keeping it in. If they didn’t think he would bring those stories back to their Senator and try to make things _better_. 

There wouldn’t be making things better. Prowl already knew that. He wrote the reports and compiled the information for him, after all, he knew his goals and his plans. There wouldn’t be _helping_ these people, there wouldn’t be _change_. There would be shanix in the pocket of the rich and scraps handed out to the place that voted for him, and anyplace, anyone else, would starve. 

Prowl could see it, unfolding in front of him like a puzzle box. Complicated. Ugly. The same story in a hundred other cities, hurdling them towards a social strata that he already knows is untenable. 

He ran the numbers. Ran them again. Took a trip. Saw Iacon, saw Helix, saw Kaon. Everywhere he went, in every culture and every government and every little pocket of their little world, he saw the same pattern playing out. History playing itself out. The nature of sentients playing itself out. 

He couldn’t let it. He’d seen so many beautiful places, spoken to so many beautiful people, seen the possibility of so many wonderful futures. Sometimes he sat in his room, in whatever motel he’d found himself in, caught up in the _awe_ of what his computer was showing him. There was such a thing as utopia, if only all the moving pieces fell into place. 

No one would listen to him if he told them that. Why would they? None of them can see it. None of them know how each moving part in the universe could come together to create something _great_. 

If they wouldn’t, Prowl knew, then they don’t need to. None of them needed to know what he’d doing to keep them safe. To make their world _good_ again. To keep them from hurtling towards the future he saw coming. 

A titan was rising in the lower levels of Cybertron, and Prowl saw the war that would come if something did not _give_. 

So the first crime Prowl committed was election fraud. He had the most powerful mind on this side of the universe, and the will to use it. Swiping his old credentials to get himself into the election headquarters to fudge the results in the right direction wasn’t _hard_ so much as it was tedious. These votes went here, those went there, the other ones simply disappeared. He ferretted out the little bugs doing another mech’s job for them, miniature programs meant to nudge the count just enough to make things seem normal when they were so, so wrong. 

He sat in a tiny room that smelled like sour oil and unwashed frames and he spun the world on his fingertip. 

New leaders meant a new regime, new hope, meant a world that might turn itself right. 

And, well, if it didn’t... he was always there, ready to nudge it back on the right course. 

He joined the police force a week later. He’d needed to keep an optic on things, after all, and there was a new Prime in need of his expertise.


End file.
